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southern history

The Author’s Corner with Gregg L. Michel

Rachel Petroziello   |  January 17, 2025

Gregg L. Michel is Professor of History and Assistant Department Chair at the University of Texas at San Antonio. This interview is based on his new book, Spying on Students: The FBI, Red Squads, and Student Activists in the 1960s […]

The Author’s Corner with Christopher E. Hendricks

Rachel Petroziello   |  January 14, 2025

Christopher E. Hendricks is Professor of History at Georgia Southern University, Armstrong Campus. This interview is based on his new book, The Colonial Towns of Piedmont North Carolina (University of Tennessee Press, 2024). JF: What led you to write The […]

The Author’s Corner with Lindsey Bestebreurtje

Rachel Petroziello   |  January 7, 2025

Lindsey Bestebreurtje is a Curatorial Assistant with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. This interview is based on her new book, Built by the People Themselves: African American Community Development in Arlington, Virginia, from the Civil […]

Kai Bird: “Mr. Carter remains the most misunderstood president of the last century.”

John Fea   |  December 31, 2024

We included this article/post in our recent Jimmy Carter/The Way of Improvement Leads Home roundup, but I reread it this morning and thought it was worth reposting. Here is Carter biographer Kai Bird’s February 2023 New York Times piece: Mr. […]

The Author’s Corner with Anthony J. Stanonis

Rachel Petroziello   |  October 14, 2024

Anthony J. Stanonis is an independent historian of the American South. This interview is based on his new book, New Orleans Pralines: Plantation Sugar, Louisiana Pecans, and the Marketing of Southern Nostalgia (LSU Press, 2024). JF: What led you to […]

J.D. Vance “turns the shame of drinking Mountain Dew into a source of class and race resentment”

John Fea   |  July 24, 2024

Mountain Dew is in the news these days, thanks to vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance. Watch: Over at The Atlantic, Ian Bogost gives us a fascinating history lesson on the drink that got me through a lot of late night […]

The Author’s Corner with Gaines M. Foster

Rachel Petroziello   |  June 19, 2024

Gaines M. Foster is Murphy J. Foster Professor of History Emeritus at Louisiana State University. This interview is based on his new book, The Limits of the Lost Cause: Essays on Civil War Memory (LSU Press, 2024). JF: What led […]

The Author’s Corner with Steven Peach

Rachel Petroziello   |  April 3, 2024

Steven Peach is Associate Professor of History at Tarleton State University. This interview is based on his new book, Rivers of Power: Creek Political Culture in the Native South, 1750–1815 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2024). JF: What led you to […]

The Author’s Corner with Michael T. Bertrand

Rachel Petroziello   |  March 20, 2024

Michael T. Bertrand is Professor of History at Tennessee State University. This interview is based on his new book, Southern History Remixed: On Rock ’n’ Roll and the Dilemma of Race (University Press of Florida, 2024). JF: What led you […]

The United Daughters of the Confederacy “seem convinced that anyone who doesn’t like them just doesn’t know who they are.”

John Fea   |  December 13, 2023

Over at The New Republic, Anna Vernarchik has some nice reporting on the current state of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Here is a taste: …the Daughters seem convinced that anyone who doesn’t like them just doesn’t know who […]

The Author’s Corner with Marvin Chiles

Rachel Petroziello   |  December 6, 2023

Marvin Chiles is Assistant Professor of African American History at Old Dominion University. This interview is based on his new book, The Struggle for Change: Race and the Politics of Reconciliation in Modern Richmond (University of Virginia Press, 2023). JF: […]

Episode 123: “Drew Gilpin Faust on Growing-Up at Midcentury”

John Fea   |  December 3, 2023

She was a privileged baby boomer who grew up on a horse farm in segregated Virginia. By her twenty-first birthday she had worked for peace in Communist Europe, traveled the country in the cause of racial justice, marched for voting rights […]

The Author’s Corner with Whitney Nell Stewart

Rachel Petroziello   |  November 29, 2023

Whitney Nell Stewart is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Texas at Dallas. This interview is based on her new book, This Is Our Home: Slavery and Struggle on Southern Plantations (University of North Carolina Press, 2023). JF: […]

Ideas in Progress: Pearl J. Young on southern religion and the Civil War

Pearl J. Young   |  October 11, 2023

A physics major turned historian tells about her research.

The Author’s Corner with Drew Swanson

Rachel Petroziello   |  August 24, 2023

Drew Swanson is Jack N. and Addie D. Averitt Distinguished Professor of Southern History at Georgia Southern University. This interview is based on his new book, A Man of Bad Reputation: The Murder of John Stephens and the Contested Landscape of North […]

Some historical context on the Jason Aldean controversy

John Fea   |  July 21, 2023

Here is historian Nicole Hemmer at CNN: It was mid-November 1927 when, at a Tennessee courthouse wrapped in patriotic decor to celebrate Armistice Day, a White mob seized a Black teenager named Henry Choate and hanged him from the building’s balcony. The […]

The Author’s Corner with Bart Elmore

Rachel Petroziello   |  June 12, 2023

Bart Elmore is Professor of Environmental History at The Ohio State University. This interview is based on his new book, Country Capitalism: How Corporations from the American South Remade Our Economy and the Planet (University of North Carolina Press, 2023). […]

The Author’s Corner with Alejandra Dubcovsky

Rachel Petroziello   |  June 6, 2023

Alejandra Dubcovsky is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Riverside. This interview is based on her new book, Talking Back: Native Women and the Making of the Early South (Yale University Press, 2023). JF: What led you […]

The Author’s Corner with Maury Nicely

Rachel Petroziello   |  May 31, 2023

Maury Nicely is a lawyer specializing in employment litigation, labor law, and general business litigation at Evans Harrison Hackett, PLLC. This interview is based on his new book, Forging a New South: The Life of General John T. Wilder (University […]

The Author’s Corner with Sharon Ann Murphy

Rachel Petroziello   |  April 12, 2023

Sharon Ann Murphy is Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History and Classics at Providence College. This interview is based on her new book, Banking on Slavery: Financing Southern Expansion in the Antebellum United States (University of Chicago […]

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